gite_, nor forced labour for the maintenance of ramparts; Church land was universally held to be the patrimony of the saint to whom it was dedicated, to violate it was sacrilege, a crime which the greediest feudal robber was generally loth to commit, and thus, amid the turmoil and warfare with which the surrounding country was so often vexed, its inhabitants for the most part enjoyed the blessing of peace. Further, justice was administered by themselves, and they were altogether free from State exactions. Indeed, so jealous was the Provost of Louvain of this privilege that he would suffer no civil officer to sojourn within his borders. Though the landed estate of the collegiate chapter was not a large one, the 'Petermen' or lay members of St. Peter's family seem to have been sufficiently numerous. The Provost had the right to admit outsiders, his conditions were not onerous--a trifling entrance fee, generally two _deniers_ and an undertaking in the event of marriage to pay a small tribute, and upon these terms a host of free men and liberated serfs were glad enough to barter their liberty, to quote the characteristic phrase of the charters of the day, 'for a servitude freer than freedom itself.' [Illustration: Saint Peter's Louvain] The privileges and immunities of the Church of St. Peter were not peculiar to that foundation, almost all the great ecclesiastical establishments of the Low Countries were similarly favoured; but whereas in other towns which had grown up on Church land the laymen affiliated to the religious community which originally owned the soil--the Martinmen at Utrecht, for example, the men of St. Rombold at Mechlin, the men of St. Bavo at Ghent, when at last they obtained rights of citizenship, lost the ecclesiastical privileges and immunities which hitherto they had enjoyed, at Louvain this was not the case: the privileges of the Petermen survived long after their obligations to the institution which conferred them had become a dead letter, and for centuries too after they had obtained full civil rights. Indeed, by the opening of the thirteen hundreds, perhaps even earlier, their connection with the Chapter of St. Peter's had ceased to be anything but a nominal one: they remained exempt from taxation and were amenable only to their own court, but the Mayor of Louvain had taken the place of the Provost in all that appertained to their government. They were still a class apart, but these men who owed their distinction to servile descent had now become a rich, influential and aristocratic caste, the cream of the burgher nobility, and thus they continued until the close of the seventeen hundreds, and then, at last, 'the men of St. Peter' were ruthlessly swept away, along with so many other interesting and time-honoured abuses.